Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Access Bank Plc, Herbert Wigwe, has been presented with the award won by Michael Akinrogunde, director of Penance, a short film that won the Best Short Film/Online Video at the just- ended Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards, AMVCA.

The Accelerate film maker project started in 2017 with the mission to educate and empower a generation of young people in the art of film-making. The platform provides intense training for creatives in the areas of directing, production, script writing and more, taught by elite Nollywood professionals and industry veterans. While congratulating Akinrogunde and the Accelerate team, the Access Bank boss expressed satisfaction with the work done. “This is a fantastic achievement. Our next challenge now is to go global and show the world the amazing creative talent that Nigeria has to offer, and I trust that this is indeed an achievable goal.” Speaking at the presentation, Michael said: ”I made Penance under the Accelerate Filmmaker Project platform and it was my first film ever. I had only garnered experience from Youtube, reading and learning about filmmaking from trainers in the Accelerate Filmmaker Project classes. I am really grateful for the guidance from the Accelerate TV family, which really helped me in my first time directing.” Group Head, Accelerate TV, Colette Otusheso stated: The Accelerate Filmmaker Project is really a passion project for us, and it’s quite rewarding to be able to train, inspire and empower young filmmakers to create freely. We just concluded the second edition of the project and are looking forward to premiering all the films at AFRIFF in November.